Outside, the street lights were glowing at half-power, arrested in the dim early mauve of their sequence. People peered quickly at each other as they passed from shadow to shadow, in doubt, and then brief solidarity. A breath of mist had seeped up the street from the river, and the pavements were slippery in the wan gleam of the lamps. Johnny crossed the Fulham Road, where the car-lights and lit buses were the brightest things; after that the houses grew taller and darker and more densely packed with that quality that was still raw and new to him, in every street name and sitting room glimpsed through unclosed curtains, the self-confidence and difference of London life.
When he got to Evert Dax’s house he stopped on the far side of the street and looked up. The faint light of the street lamp was lost among the curved wrought iron and dead winter shrubbery of the first-floor balcony, and he could barely make out the balustrade at the top in front of Ivan’s attic window. There was a trace of music, and between the curtains of the bay window on the ground floor, five steps above street level, he saw a boldly dressed woman with white hair and a gaunt man in a dark suit and tie waltz mechanically past the spider plants and standard lamps: the Polish couple – Ivan had mentioned them. The windows on the first floor, behind the balcony railings, were all dark. The two floors above that, with their smaller windows, were where Evert Dax lived and worked, curtains closed but a hint of welcome in the pink gap between them; and above that again, the shadowy balustrade, the dormers of Ivan’s room, the tall party-wall of chimney stacks and aerials spectral against the sky. Was he going to spend the night up there? It was all too vague, silly drunk talk of drinks, and even dancing. Johnny said should they go to a nightclub, a gay disco, something he hadn’t had the nerve to do by himself? Ivan beamed, ‘Yes, of course!’, a silver promise that tarnished in seconds in the air. And if so, would they come back here at one or two, when everyone else was asleep? And what then? What about the morning? The Poles downstairs, the unseen banker on the first floor, could come and go as they pleased, but Ivan’s daily life must be tangled with Evert’s, their comings and goings known to each other.
When he climbed the steps it was hard to see the bells . . . he pressed the top one and stood looking down into the basement area, a huddled below-decks sheeted in shadow. A voice crackled ‘Hello?’ – ‘It’s Johnny . . . . Johnny Sparsholt’ – the only response a dull buzz and he was in. The entryphone was the glamour of London itself, magic as routine. He felt for another button by the door and lights came on in the hall. Then he closed the street door and stood for a second, alone this time in the limbo of admittance, known to be there but not yet seen. Through the further closed door on the right the waltz music could be heard going on. The lift was down and waiting, but he took the stairs as before, wanting to look at the pictures on the way but then fearing the impatience of whoever had answered the bell.
He stopped on the second-floor landing and peered upwards into the shadows; where was the next light switch? Talk came from the half-open door of the sitting room – Evert Dax himself, sounding fretful, and Iffy’s gruff voice, and a lighter, very posh woman. ‘I can’t sell,’ Evert said, ‘with sitting tenants, and anyway what about all the stuff.’
‘I certainly wouldn’t want to move,’ said Iffy.
‘Anyway it’s my home, whoever’s running the bloody country.’
‘Mm . . . well, I suppose nothing’s for ever, is it, love.’
‘I think you should all stop listening to Gordon,’ said the other woman. ‘He’s just upsetting you for his own amusement.’
‘I only hope you’re right,’ Iffy said, rather grimly. ‘I don’t fancy living in a Communist country. It’s a subject I do know something about.’
Johnny found the switch and plunged the whole staircase into darkness. Evert called out, ‘Oh! Is that Johnny?’
‘Sorry!’ said Johnny, and went cautiously across the landing. When he looked round the door he saw Evert and Iffy sitting by the fire with a tea tray on the low stool in front of them while, standing at the window with her back turned, a slim blonde girl in a Davy Crockett jacket and tight black jeans gazed out through her own reflection at the night. Iffy looked up at him briefly, and said, ‘Hullo,’ as if still thinking about something else.
‘You’ll want to see Ivan,’ said Evert, ‘but say hello to us first.’
The young woman stayed watching the scene in the window, and it was only when Johnny, unsure if he was being favoured or gently ticked off, said, ‘If that’s all right . . .’ that she turned round and looked at him directly:
‘Of course it’s all right,’ she said.
‘Jonathan,’ said Iffy, ‘you haven’t met my daughter Francesca.’
He said hello over the intervening space, the backs of chairs. Francesca nodded at him, smiled a fraction and raised an eyebrow – like Ivan before her, she had the look of knowing something about him already. She had a severe pale beauty and the poise of a woman of her mother’s age – indeed more poise than Iffy, who today in a yellow Indian skirt with tiny mirrors sewn in rows and a large woolly top had a ramshackle air, and had surely never been so nice to look at. There was a faint pale swooping line round Francesca’s throat, where in a man the Adam’s apple would be, and in an older woman a first fine crease of age. Johnny saw it was where some tight ribbon or necklace had been removed perhaps minutes before. She said, ‘Freddie’s been talking about you.’
‘Oh, has he . . .’ said Johnny, while Evert smiled and cleared his throat.
‘Have you read his new book?’ Francesca said.
‘I haven’t actually,’ said Johnny.
‘I wonder if you’ll like it,’ said Francesca.
‘I’m not a big reader,’ said Johnny.
‘Francesca hasn’t read it either,’ said Iffy. ‘Pay no attention.’
‘Oh,’ said Johnny, and started to blush. ‘Who is Freddie, exactly?’
‘Ah . . .’ said Evert, with a gasp and a smile, ‘who is Freddie?’ – appealing to himself as well as the others.
‘Oh, well . . .’ said Francesca, drawing her head back.
‘Where to start,’ said Iffy and shook her head.
‘No reason you should know,’ said Evert, so courteously as to suggest the opposite. There was a pause as they considered how best to educate him in this large subject.
‘I know his name,’ said Johnny.
‘So you haven’t read The Lion Griefs?’ Francesca said, biting her lip.
‘I’d be amazed if he’d read The Lion Griefs,’ said Iffy.
‘What is it?’ Johnny said, not even understanding the title.
‘It’s a memoir,’ said Iffy, ‘but of course he also writes fiction.’
‘Mm, and not always easy to tell which is which,’ said Evert.
‘He keeps a famous diary,’ said Iffy, ‘which we all live in terror of.’ She sat forward over the tray, the ruined cake on its doily. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea?’
‘Oh – no thanks.’ He was dying for a beer, or a glass of wine.
‘Well, sit down anyway,’ said Evert. ‘Take your coat off.’
Johnny did so, laid his coat over a chair, sat down and looked around, explored the view of the sitting room in its normal and private arrangement, books on the floor, the small red light of the stereo, the Nicholsons and what he now knew were the Goyles in their everyday habit of being seen and ignored.
‘I want to have a look at your work, by the way,’ said Francesca.
‘I’m not doing much at the moment,’ said Johnny.
‘Oh, Brian Savory said you were sketching the old gang the other night.’
‘Oh, did he?’ said Johnny, and laughed.
‘Were you drawing us?’ said Iffy. ‘You must let us see.’